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Susan SmithSusan Smith has worked as an editor and writer in the technology industry for over 16 years. As an editor she has been responsible for the launch of a number of technology trade publications, both in print and online. Currently, Susan is the Editor of GISCafe and AECCafe, as well as those sites’ newsletters and blogs. She writes on a number of topics, including but not limited to geospatial, architecture, engineering and construction. As many technologies evolve and occasionally merge, Susan finds herself uniquely situated to be able to cover diverse topics with facility. « Less

Susan SmithSusan Smith has worked as an editor and writer in the technology industry for over 16 years. As an editor she has been responsible for the launch of a number of technology trade publications, both in print and online. Currently, Susan is the Editor of GISCafe and AECCafe, as well as those sites’ … More »

GISCafe Voice is running a Special Feature Blog on the topic of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) the week of October 20th. If you wish to have your company included, please let me know, Susan Smith at susan.smith@ibsystems.com The GISCafe UAS Questionnaire will be sent to all companies who offer UAV and UAS products and services, so that we may thoroughly cover all opportunities available. Or, you can print it yourself from this blog and email it to me.

PDF3D 3D PDF conversion and publishing software has released their latest version update with more features of their advanced PRC technology for GIS users. The development timeframe has been speeded up to bring this technology to market early.

Jon Skiffington, LizardTech director of Product Management, spoke to the GISCafe Voice about the latest release of GeoGofer, LizardTech’s latest software solution for finding geospatial imagery quickly and efficiently, regardless of where it is located is now available for only $250.

Reposting: During the week of September 15th, GISCafe Voice will run a special feature blog on the topic, “Satellite Imaging.”

If you wish to have your company included, please let me know, Susan Smith at susan.smith@ibsystems.com The Satellite Imaging Questionnaire will be sent to all companies who offer satellite imaging products and services, so that we may thoroughly cover all opportunities available. Or, you can print it yourself from this blog and email it to me.

At Esri UC, we heard about the launch of DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-3 from DigitalGlobe senior scientist, Product Development and Labs, Bill Baugh. This satellite will be especially helpful for mapping mineral mining.

WorldView-3 is superspectral and has 16 spectrums, and contains the overall structure of spectrum. “The bands coming in WorldView-3 will allow you to go after data you might not be able to go after normally,” said Baugh. “You’ll be able to see iron, rocks (short wave infrared) and steel infrastructure.”Additionally, with SWIR-6 you can see through the smoke from a fire, which would be valuable for crisis response, when you have to see what’s on the ground.

At the other end of the spectrum (excuse the pun), in 2009, a couple of Stanford grad students envisioned that they could “index the earth the way Google indexes the Internet.” This is how the radical satellite imaging company Skybox was born. And now Google has acquired the company. So I guess that’s where Google comes in: already there, in the way of indexing. And Skybox is already there in terms of providing the satellite. Last November the company launched its first mini-bar-sized satellite, SkySat-1 into orbit aboard a Russian Dnepr rocket. Plans are to launch eight more by the end of 2015. Skybox even has its own rocket.

I spoke to many of you at Esri UC, but I know there are many out there that I may have missed seeing. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to be included in the September coverage. Deadline for materials: September 1, 2014.

Five-year-old Uber, a company whose expertise is in getting you from one location to another, wants to add the service of how to deliver goods to people’s homes also.

Recently Uber announced Uber Corner Store, a pilot program which is a service that would enable Uber users in the Washington D.C. region to order grocery or pharmacy items such as toothpaste delivered from local stores, much like some mom-and-pop stores used to make home deliveries. The pilot is expected to only last for a few weeks, but signals what the long term vision of the company is. This would put Uber at more than a location company to a bonafide logistics company.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s idea of the Corner Store could position the company in direct competition with the two superpowers Google and Amazon, who have been going after that same-day delivery market for a number of years. The on-demand economy is growing and both companies have their version of instant gratification for that economy. The other part of that is to keep shoppers engaged in their one service so they don’t shop elsewhere. Google has added new retailers to its Shopping Express offering. Amazon expanded it’s Get It Today service to six new locations.

Uber has not figured out a way to make this service earn money, and currently the service is free for customers. Uber has an advantage in that it has been in the forefront of educating users to treat their smartphones like “remote controls” so that they can get anything by using an app or just touching a button on their mobile device.

The face of GIS and Geospatial education has changed dramatically over the past few years, with online courses being offered in numerous subjects, ranging from GIS fundamentals to Spatial Analytics and Geodesign. What is more phenomenal is that these courses reach out to all corners of the earth, making a GIS/geospatial education a possibility for almost everyone on the planet.

A recent CNN report announced thatNASA is asking for the help of citizens in viewing hundreds of thousands of images taken from space over the years, from the 1960s Mercury missions to the present images snapped from the International Space Station.

North Korea is barely lit when juxtaposed with neighboring South Korea and China.

NASA says the hope is that the images “could help save energy, contribute to better human health and safety and improve our understanding of atmospheric chemistry. But scientists need your help to make that happen.”

The catalog contains more than 1.8 million photos, about 1.3 million of them from the space station and roughly 30% of them taken at night.

Photos: International Space Station

NASA gets rare view of black hole

NASA tests supersonic parachute for Mars

Tyson on deep space exploration

The CNN report said that before 2003, night images from the space station could be blurry, even with high-speed film and manual tracking, because the station moves at about 17,500 mph. In that same year, astronaut Don Pettit used a drill and assorted parts he found on the station to cobble together a “barn-door tracker,” a lower-tech predecessor to the European Space Agency’s NightPod, which was installed at the space station nine years later.

According to the report, NightPod’s motorized tripod compensates for the space station’s speed, providing what NASA scientist William Stefanov says are the highest-resolution night images from orbit. Satellites collect data more regularly, but the photos tend to be lower resolution. “Now the pictures are clear, but their location may not be, which limits their usefulness,” the NASA news release says.

Citizen science has a better handle on location than the night images from the space station and satellite imagery. The Complutense University of Madrid is spearheading efforts to get citizen input and organize the photos. They have broken down the the images into three components requiring different levels of participation:

1. Dark skies. This is the easiest project, as it requires no scientific expertise. “Anyone can help” by sorting the images into the categories: cities, stars or other objects, said Alejandro Sanchez, doctoral student at Complutense.

“Without the help of citizens, it is almost impossible to use these images scientifically. Algorithms cannot distinguish between stars, cities and other objects, such as the moon. Humans are much more efficient for complex image analysis,” he said.

One might not think too much about the historic police boxes that look like American telephone booths that used to dot the UK landscape. Now, only a handful of them are left. Here is a map of all the original ones currently known, as well as replicas of originals.

I’m wondering if the renewed interest in this now defunct form of 911 is as a result of the popular “Dr. Who” PBS series, in which the infamous Doctor goes into his “Tardis” which is in fact, a replica of a 1929 police box.

That’s where the resemblance ends, however, as the Tardis is “much bigger inside than it is outside” with all forms of technology for fighting evil forces within its four walls.

In a technical session entitled “ArcGIS Online and Social Media,” two interesting speakers spoke about the use of ArcGIS Online and the use of social media to facilitate operations during an international golf tournament in a community and create an interactive map of a popular recreational region. Brandon Brown, GIS administrator, from City of Dublin, Ohio, spoke at the Esri User Conference 2014 on the topic, “Presidential GIS – ArcGIS Online’s Role in the 2013 President’s Cup.”